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birthday

At 5:30, I’m going to wake my wife up so she can make some blueberry muffins and decorate the kitchen.

No…it’s not some perverse chauvinistic demand. I don’t make her wake up early everyday so that she can make me some muffins. It’s not like that.

Today is a special day. Today is our first baby’s birthday.

Today our first baby turns eighteen.

I don’t know if a parent ever completely makes the jump from “first baby” thoughts to “now we have a grownup daughter”. I think that in my mind, she’ll always be little…at least in some corner of my mind, I’ll hold on to those memories like my life depended on it.

“Like my life depended on it…” That’s kind of an odd and strong way to put it…but when you get down to it, I guess my life really does depend on all the good memories my family has given me.

When we brought her home from the hospital for the first time, it felt like she might break when we put her into her thrift store car seat for the first time.

It was terrifying and exciting.

How do you handle a baby? How do you handle your baby? She was the first baby I’d ever held that I wasn’t going to be handing back to the parents when I was finished holding her.

We were the parents. There wasn’t anyone who we would ever hand her off to.

And now…she’s eighteen.

In some states, that means that she’s a grownup…

When we put her into her car seat in that old Plymouth Valiant, it was only that single moment that we were thinking about. You can plan…and suppose…and expect…and maybe even fear a little before a baby is born…but when your child finally arrives and you’re holding her for the first time, it’s only that single moment that you’re aware of.

Now, eighteen years later, “that single moment” and all the other single moments fill a deep pool. We have a lot of good memories.